Conference: Aesthetics and Politics - Counter-Narratives, New Publics, and the Role of Dissent in the Arab World (Cairo, 16-26 Sep. 2012)

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Sep 16, 2012 Region
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Conference: Aesthetics and Politics - Counter-Narratives, New Publics, and the Role of Dissent in the Arab World (Cairo, 16-26 Sep. 2012)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

"Aesthetics and Politics: Counter-Narratives, New Publics, and the Role of Dissent in the Arab World" is the theme of the International Summer Academy the research program Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe (EUME) of the Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien and the ‘Center for Translation Studies’ of the American University in Cairo are jointly organizing from September 16 — 27, 2012 at the American University in Cairo in cooperation with the English Department of Cairo University and the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies of Philipps University Marburg, Germany.

The Summer Academy is designed to support scholarly networks and contribute to closer ties among research activities in and outside Europe and the Middle East. Academics and Artists are encouraged to explore aesthetic forms in the broadest sense—not in only literature, but also in new media, music, film, performance, fashion and street art.

The uprisings in the Arab world have challenged traditional paradigms for understanding culture and politics in the region and have opened up new sets of questions in both spheres. ‘Revolution,’ as both concept and practice, has at once enabled innovative modes of critique, imaginings of new utopias, re-signified subjectivities, as well as communal solidarities. What are some of the new terms, frames of understanding, and transformations that have begun to crystallize through the political and cultural changes in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings? In what ways do the uprisings across the Arab world reformulate the relationship between politics and culture in and outside the region? How could the role of dissent and counternarratives in the political process be understood? And how should the place of literature and the arts in this new context be conceived? How might key political terms inspired by the Arab uprisings emphasizing freedom, human dignity, and social justice be understood and deployed —and what do these terms mean in the academic contexts and beyond?

For a period of two weeks 34 doctoral, post-doctoral, and advanced researchers from different academic disciplines, from Europe, the Arab World and the United States will discuss the relationship of Aesthetics and Politics in relation to the ongoing transformations in the Arab World on the basis of their own research projects, among each other and with academics, artists, writers and intellectuals from Egypt.

The public program of the Summer Academy will is scheduled to begin on Monday, September 17 and will end on Wednesday, September 26. It includes working sessions of the participants and public lectures panel discussions detailed in this brochure and involves academics, graduate students, artists, intellectuals, and writers.

The Summer Academy is chaired by a group of scholars that include Randa Aboubakr (Cairo University), Michael Allan (University of Oregon), Ayman El-Desouky (SOAS London), Elias Khoury (NYU/Beirut), Samia Mehrez (American University in Cairo), Rachid Ouaissa (Philipps-Universität Marburg), Friederike Pannewick (Philipps-Universitaet Marburg), Samah Selim (Rutgers University). 

The public program of the Summer Academy will be opened on Monday, September 27, 7 pm with a keynote by Elias Khoury, “Towards an Intellectual-Ethical Code in the Time of the Arab Revolutions”. The program includes working sessions of the participants and public lectures and panel discussions on themes such as “The Role of Intellectuals in the Arab Revolutions”, “Literature, Revolution and Politics”, “Archiving the Revolution”, Cultural Policies or the Role of Popular Culture” and involves academics, artists, intellectuals and writers such as Mona Abaza, Yasser Allam, Elias Khoury, Huda Lutfi, Tahani Rached, Emad Abou Ghazi, Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, Mona Prince, Mohammad Rabie, Mona Abaza, Khaled Fahmy, Ahmed Sultan, Sayed Mahmoud , Karima Mansour , Fayrouz Karawya, Tamer El Said, Khaled Fahmy, representatives from the Mosireen Group, from the AUC Student Pilot Project: Wiki Biographical Dictionary of the Revolution.

The Summer Academy is designed to support scholarly networks and contribute to closer ties among research activities in and outside Europe and the Middle East. Academics and Artists are encouraged to explore aesthetic forms in the broadest sense—not in only literature, but also in new media, music, film, performance, fashion and street art. How have these aesthetic forms facilitated the imagining of political practice and a new public sphere? Can we trace echoes of this political vocabulary in the novels, art, poetry, songs, and films of the last decades, many of which deployed emancipatory or subversive rhetoric? The postmodernism of the 1990s and 2000s in the Arab world emerged as an explicit rejection of older forms of realism, and aesthetic—as well as political—commitments: the fragment, the minority, the personal confession, the pastiche, and the mistrust of representation itself were all features of this trend. Were the 21st century uprisings nourished and shaped by this movement, or has their explosion onto the world stage sounded the death-knell of the postmodern Arab subject? What kinds of new narrative modes and structures—or even altogether new genres—might emerge from this revolutionary moment?

What is the impact of old and new media on the values and norms of a society? Do new forms of communication point to new ways of reconstructing civil society in the Middle East or are these channels limited to intellectual and social elites? How has new media transformed literature? We might consider shifts both in style and language (with the influence of SMS language, cell phone novels and blogs), as well as the new publics imagined in these textual forms. Is there something like a new aesthetic implicit in the current revolutionary movement?

Part of analyzing the relationship of aesthetics and politics means rethinking the role of culture and intellectuals in a revolutionary context. Are intellectuals still relevant in current public debates? Does the term ‘intellectual’ apply to the new actors, movements, and organizations involved in the Arab uprisings? What does a ‘revolution’ without leaders tell us about the role of intellectuals in the 21st century? These questions are deeply embedded in the ongoing reconfiguration of the idea of culture as a whole in the revolutionary imagination. How are intellectuals, artists, institutional actors and the broader public beginning to rethink the idea of culture as a public good in light of the complex tensions between the effects of globalization and the marketplace on the one hand, and established practices of ‘managed’ national culture on the other? How are we to define public culture in this context, and how can we begin to map out a revolutionary genealogy of cultural practice relevant to the changing landscapes of the 21st century? In what ways do cultural forms inflect the political imaginary, and what might be the role of the revolutionary state, corporate foundations, and the market in cultural production and dissemination? 

Contact

Georges Khalil
Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe
Forum Transregionale Studien
c/o Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Wallotstrasse 19 / 14193 Berlin / Germany
eume@trafo-berlin.de

For more information on Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe: www.eume-berlin.de

For more information on the Forum Transregionale Studien: www.forum-transregionale-studien.de

Participants:

Yakein Abdelmagid (Duke University)

  • Artists and Art of Living: Labor, Aesthetics and Politics

Randa Aboubakr (Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Cairo University)

  • Popular Culture and Revolution

Ghada Alakhdar (Modern Sciences and Arts University, Cairo)

  • Promoting Cultural Diversity Online

Yvonne Albers (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

  • The Artist and his Public – Theoretical and Artistic Self-Reflection in Contemporary Lebanese Art

Michael Allan (University of Oregon / EUME-Fellow 2011/12)

  • Old Media/New Futures: Fanonian Reflections on the Arab Uprisings

Hanan Badr (Universität Erfurt / Cairo University)

  • Internet Activism and Aesthetics in Egypt’s Online Political Communication

Judith Bihr (Universität zu Köln)

  • Ornamental Breakthroughs. Contemporary Egyptian Art within an Intercultural Discourse

Sina Birkholz (Universität Augsburg / Fellow Max-Weber-Programm)

  • (Re-)writing Personal Stories: Women and Youth in Post-Revolutionary Egypt

Julia Clauß (Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Society)

  • Cultural Change in 21st Century Saudi Arabia

Nancy Demerdash (Princeton University)

  • Of Political Prerogatives and Artistic Praxis

Ayman El-Desouky (SOAS, University of London)

Ilka-Susanna Eickhof (Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Berlin)

  • Pretty Interventions – A Critical Analysis of the Regulation of Contemporary Art and Cultural Politics in Amman and Cairo (and Damascus)

Mohamed Elshahed (New York University)

  • Revolutionary Modernism? Architecture and the Politics of Transition in Egypt 1939-1965

Doa’a Embabi (Ain Shams University)

  • (Re)claiming Egyptian Public Sphere

Amal Eqeiq (University of Washington)

  • The Ghetto Intellectual: Voicing Dissent from the Margins

Joseph R. Farag (University of London)

  • Write of Return: The Palestinian Short Story in Exile

Igor Gatzsche (Universität Hamburg)

  • Hip Hop in Egypt. Rebellion and Religion in North-African Popular Culture

Laura Gribbon (SOAS, University of London)

  • Narratives of Martyrdom throughout the Egyptian Revolution, 2011-12

Walid El Houri (University of Amsterdam)

  • Resistance as Hegemony: Space and People in the Arab Uprisings

Elias Khoury (New York University / Beirut)

  • Towards an Intellectual Ethical Code in the Time of the Arab Revolutions

Samia Mehrez (American University in Cairo)

Helena Nassif (Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Beirut)

  • Who Crosses the Patriotic Border? Fiction, Protest and Stardom. The Case of Muna Wassef

Georgiana Nicoarea (University of Bucharest)

  • Graffiti in the Arab World – Youth Identity between Tradition and Modernity

Rachid Ouaissa (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

Friederike Pannewick (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London)

  • Nationalism, Subjectivity, Intertextuality: Palestinian Literature Re-Framing the Paradigm

Nadia Radwan (Geneva University)

  • Arts and Politics in Egyptian Uprisings: A Cultural Awakening?

Lewis IV Sanders (American University in Cairo)

  • Curating an Uprising: The Dynamics of Art and Revolution on the Egyptian Street

Samah Selim (Rutgers University)

Peter Snowdon (University of Hasselt)

  • The Possibility of a Community: Documentary Film Practice after the Arab Spring

Hania Sobhy (SOAS, University of London/EUME-Fellow 2012/13)

  • Passionate Politics in the Aftermath of the ‘Egyptian Revolution’: Salafi and Revolutionary Mobilization in the 2012 Presidential Elections

Ali Sonay (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

  • Becoming Political and Global in Egyptian Youth Movements

Mark Westmoreland (American University in Cairo)

  • Political Evidence: Documentary Aesthetics in Lebanon and Egypt

 

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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412